Monthly Archives: July 2006

Pedophilia in Elysium In Austria about 20 years ago, I had the rare good fortune to chat with the legendary critic H.H. Stuckenschmidt, shortly before his death. The old man had lived through everything, all the way back to Mahler, and the thing I remember best about his conversation was that the rich, steamy orchestration […]

Another Opening . . . I will never tire of writing about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, or of encountering new reasons for wanting to. On a benign Tuesday last week, that music – calm and openhanded one moment, furious and mysterious the next, triumphant yet watchful at the end – joined the air traffic and the […]

Only Partly Used Memories around John Mauceri come to mind as he begins his final season as the Hollywood Bowl’s Man of Much Music. They start back in 1973, as the Yalie with the golden curls, still John MOSS-ery to his classmates, is summoned to Brooklyn Academy by Leonard Bernstein to conduct the revised and […]

Please Send No Flowers Old Sourpuss has been heard from again. “A large chunk of masonry fell off the music industry last week . . .” announced the London-based critic, observer, editor (of a book of mine, even) and all-around gadfly Norman Lebrecht in his Montreal-based La Scena Musicale, “. . . another step towards […]